Gatekeepers are everywhere in our modern technocracy.
Spotify has quit paying royalties to artists whose songs receive less than 1,000 streams per year.
Spotify determines which artists get discovered and heard in their algorithms.
For example, their DJ X, which is their AI driven disc jockey that a listener can use to find new music, works algorithmically. Spotify also has Discover playlists that work algorithmically.
I have a hand full of songs on Spotify. These songs aren’t currently, and have never been, on any of their playlists for new fans to potentially hear.
wrote about a very troubling thing on Spotify - they pay for their own music to get created, stream that, so that they don’t have to pay actual artists for their streams.
Here are the analytics for the last 12 months for the Night Noises 6 song EP that I put on Spotify:
These 20 listeners are likely friends and family.
Remember, a given song itself has to have over 1,000 streams in a year in order for me to get the $4 that 1,000 streams would earn.
What you see above represents an album with 6 songs.
If you want to hear the songs, here they are:
Given that these are largely instrumental songs, and given that it’s largely instrumental music that’s being generated and owned by Spotify to avoid paying royalties, my album is especially prone to being nonexistent in Spotify’s algorithms, given that they’d have to pay me royalties. It makes me think that small artists like me might be intentionally suppressed.
Maybe my music is terrible, and no one likes it. I like it, but maybe I’m biased given that I created it. Maybe I have blinders on, like having an unattractive baby that everyone sees but you because you love your child too much to be objective.
Spotify denied the claims that they create and stream their own songs:
“We do not and have never created ‘fake’ artists and put them on Spotify playlists. Categorically untrue, full stop,” a Spotify spokesperson wrote in an email. “We pay royalties — sound and publishing — for all tracks on Spotify, and for everything we playlist. We do not own rights, we’re not a label, all our music is licensed from rightsholders and we pay them — we don’t pay ourselves.”
The part about paying royalties for all tracks on Spotify is categorically untrue, full stop. They only pay for tracks that earn more than 1,000 streams per year, and they control the gateway to discovery that happens, let’s say, organically, on Spotify.
I don’t think anything is organic in the normal sense of the digital meaning on Spotify. They have no way of determining quality, given that the enjoyment of music is an entirely subjective experience. At least with Google they tie an article’s validity to how many backlinks it gets from other reputable sites, and creates a kind of interwoven grid or web system to determine a website’s place in a hierarchy.
But there are no such indicators or signals with songs on Spotify.
It’s also telling to me that when they suggest other artists that are like me, they seem to be very low effort songs to me (again this is subjective to me). I don’t see my songs that way.
“But how about promoting your music on other platforms” one might ask.
All platforms gatekeep.
My average “Substack Notes” posts garner about less than 20 impressions per note. The average for all Notes is less than 20 impressions. And I’ve written hundreds of Notes.
This is typical:
We are under the control of proprietary opaque algorithms that we do not understand and have no access to, handled by our digital overlords.
A site will never grow by using Notes if the Notes get 7 impressions.
A full scale deep dive into how we are wards of tech bros on reservation lands owned by the technocracy, like the Native Americans were (and still are) wards of the government and initially entirely at the mercy of their handouts.
“The algorithm giveth and the algorithm taketh away” definitely not blessed is the name of the algorithm.
As an artist in print or in music, one important way to gauge your abilities is by public opinion. But if the public is never granted access to the written word or the song, then we are left in a kind of limbo state which is kind of destabilizing to anyone who cares about other’s perceptions, as the necessary feedback never occurs.
It is exactly in scenarios like these when an artist would have to figure out what their real motives are - is it to write or make music for an intrinsic reward, or for public accolades?
What does one do if the public accolades (or lack thereof) aren’t a possibility given the subjugation and suppression by algorithms?
Well, if you keep creating, then it’s for a different motive, which, I think, kind of proves whether a person has a true desire within them, and the external locus of control doesn’t ultimately deter their art.
So I’ll keep writing and making music because I enjoy doing them.